ATHENS.-The Athens Print Fest 09 / First Edition is being organized by the Greek Printmakers Association and the Cultural Organization of the Municipality of Athens, from June 3rd to 28th, 2009, in various locations in the city of Athens.

The Festival opens officially on Wednesday, June 10th, at 20:00 at the Melina Cultural Center of the Municipality of Athens.

The Greek Printmakers Association is participating in the Festival with a thematic exhibition entitled Difficult Nights taking place at the Melina Cultural Center from June 3rd to 28th. The exhibition comprises works designed to match the doubtful days we live in. The night is modern, the icon of our ignorance, of our limits, the core of our being. Plato thrust us into the dark of the cave, thus condemning the false, misleading quality of light. Tiresius the clairvoyant did not need eyes in order to see. The night requires us to conjure up a different kind of gaze. And it is up to each of us to find our own perspective; to each his own night. Artists Odysseas Annitsakis, Ilia Rena Anoussi, Susanna Aposporidou, Mihalis Arfaras, George Vlassopoulos, Manolis Yannadakis, Nikos Desekopoulos, Elisabeth Dionysopoulou, Christiana Iliopoulou, Eleni Kaprou, Aria Komianou, Yannis Kolios, Grigoris Kotsaris, Dimitra Koumantaki, Adriana Kotsi, Dina Kotsiou, Kati Mahrt, George Milios, Tonia Nikolaidi, Iris Xyla-Xanalatou, Eleni Ikonomidou, Pino Pantolfini, Katerina Papadimitropoulou, Apostolos Piroudinis, Dimitra Petropoulou  Dimitraki, Irene Podimata  Stefanaki, Dimitra Siaterli, Rania Stathopoulou, Nikos Stavrakantonakis, Yannis Stefanakis, Mary Schina, Vicky Tsalamata and Florence Christaki have been asked to give participating in a group exhibition comprising 100 works.

On their own exhibition premises, the Technohoros (Artspace), the Greek Printmakers Association also presents an exhibit of small prints, entitled Pocket Print, from June 3rd to 28th. The etchings on show will be contributed by members and associates of Technohoros. Etched and printed based on various techniques, they demonstrate the artists excellent knowledge of their craft as applied to small-sized works.

As part of the First Edition Prints Fest, the Hellenic American Union presents for the first time The Etchings of the Angelos and Leto Catacouzinos Foundation, from June 3rd to 30th. The collection includes works by Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas, Spyros Vassiliou, Yannis Tsarouchis, Giorgos Demos, and others. These etchings were gifts from the artists to the Catacouzinos couple, at a time when their home was an art salon of the 1930s generation. At the same time, they reflect the strong bonds created between significant intellectual personalities at that time.

With this exhibition, the Hellenic American Union wishes to honor Angelos Catacouzinos, who was not only a distinguished neurologist and psychiatrist, but also a founding member and the president of the Hellenic American Union from 1967 until 1975. During this time, he helped make the Hellenic American Union a prestigious cultural organization and laid valuable groundwork for its future development and progress.

The exhibition also includes etchings by Nikolaos Hadjikyriakos  Ghikas, who was a close friend of Angelos Catacouzinos. Hadjikyriakos  Ghikas himself was also a founding member of the Hellenic American Union. The exhibition will be held at the Hellenic American Unions Gallery named after the renowned Greek artist.

From June 3rd to 30th, Alpha Bank, will be showing the educational exhibition What Is a Print? at the Hellenic American Unions Kennedy Gallery (Massalias 22, Athens). Alpha Bank has a considerable collection of etchings, in particular by Greek artists (woodcut and copperplate prints, lithographies, books containing original etchings). It is a collection spanning the entire history of printmaking in Greece from 1880 up to the present day and comprising works by all significant artists.

Printmaking techniques, i.e. the way in which an etching is created, are quite complex, and producing copies of each etching is based on a difficult procedure requiring a well-organized workshop and a great deal of specific knowledge and skills (making the initial sketch, etching the plaque, printing the etching, producing identical copies, etc.).

This exhibition chooses a straightforward approach to the creation of prints, and does so by showing what the inside of an etching and printmaking workshop looks like, by exhibiting tools, printmaking plaques and the works that result from them. In addition, thorough explanatory texts and photographs allow us to observe the various stages of printing an etching.

The Cervantes Institute will host a solo exhibition by the Spanish artist Ines Piqueras Garcia entitled Innermost Nature from June 3rd to 28th.

Ines Piqueras Garcia was born in 1977 in Valencia and graduated from the San Carlos School of Fine Arts in her hometown. She has received scholarships from the Spanish and Greek governments, since she lives and works in both countries. This is her sixth exhibition in Athens. Her work is always inspired and guided by the pulsing of nature in all of its forms and motives derived from this, and it answers to the absolute need for change, experimenting and exploring. She uses various printmaking techniques, traditional and contemporary alike, as well as a combination thereof. When the time comes to print, she prints, cuts, mounts, glues and sews, playing with all of the possibilities at her disposal and using a wide range of materials: hand-made paper, fabric, plastic, soft metal, etc.

From June 3rd to 27th, the French Institute will be hosting an exhibition on its own premises by the printmakers of the PAS GRAVE group (Dominique ALIADIERE, Hélène BELIN, Corie BIZOUARD, Devorah BOXER, Alain CAZALIS, Catherine GILLET, Elsa MARC, Dominique MOINDRAUT, Christiane VIELLE, Muriel RIGAL and Zanoarisoa RAJAONA).

PAS GRAVE was born from the desire of certain artists to work creatively alongside their usual network, a kind of slightly parenthetic activity in every possible sense of the term, meaning that they work openly, flexibly, with the goal of throwing light on the art of printmaking through a liberal and less conventional prism.

This initiative is based on the sheer desire to allow everybody to partake in the pleasure of viewing these pictures, by way of all conceivable techniques linked to printmaking, as well as providing artists and above all the public, which, especially in France, is not inclined to see printmaking in a new light, with the opportunity to meet on the occasion of exhibitions and events.

From June 3rd to 28th, the Ιtalian Institute is hosting a group exhibition of Contemporary Italian Etchings entitled The Dual Dream of Art in its premises (Patission 47). 34 works will be on show at this exhibition, all from the 2RC Atelier and curated by Achille Bonito Oliva, thus allowing the Italian Cultural Institute of Athens to present a unique panorama of Italian etchings from the 1970s to the present day. With works by Lucio Fontana, Burri, Afro, Giacomo Manzu and other artists, the show reflects the evolution of amorphous Italian printmaking in the most expressive of ways.

From June 18th to 28th, the Athens School of Fine Arts will be presenting in the group exhibition entitled Printmaking at the House of Cyprus in the premises of the House of Cyprus (Skoufa Str. and Heraklitou 10). It will cover a wide range of works by students of the Printmaking Department: Vassiliki Anastasiou, Kanuto Kalan, Panagiotis Ferentinos, Miltiadis Petalas, Lia Blioumi, Kleves Krisiko, Konstantinos Papamihalopoulos, Ilias Kotsiras, Andreas Kontonis, Anni Zavitsanou, Eleni Dervisoglou, Vassiliki Garavela, Leonidas Yannakopoulos and Matina Georga, as well as a selection of works by the well-known printmaker and professor of printmaking at the Athens School of Fine Arts, Michalis Arfaras. What is particularly interesting about this exhibition, is the quality of the images, and the perfection of the prints, made by these young artists and their professor alike, none of whom hesitate to avail themselves of the entire range of etching and printmaking techniques. The works on show reveal the artists thorough knowledge of art history and their profound practical and theoretical understanding of the aesthetic philosophy of the art of printmaking. The exhibition intends to provide art-lovers with a preview of the future of printmaking.

From June 11th to 28th, the Piraeus Municipal Gallery will be presenting a group exhibition of Greek etchings entitled Impressions on Paper  the Evolution of Greek Printmaking from 1860 up to the Present Day. This is a unique undertaking in the field of visual arts, curated by Emmanuel Mavromatis (Honorary Professor of Art History at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki), who specializes in the study of printmaking and has endeavored to trace its development from the 19th century until the present day, based on authentic etchings by 126 artists and a total of approximately 300 works on show at the exhibition.